Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 streamlines cloud migrations

Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 shipped today, with new features to …

Microsoft today released Service Pack 2 for its Exchange mail, calendaring, and contacts server. In addition to the usual bug fixes and stability improvements, the service pack introduces new support for "hybrid deployments": Exchange 2010 installations that are partially on-premises, partially in the cloud.

Hybrid deployments were first introduced with the RTM release of Exchange 2010. They allow companies to migrate from on-premises Exchange installations to cloud-based ones in a piecemeal fashion. In a hybrid deployment, mailboxes, calendars, and contacts can reside locally or in the cloud; Exchange will ensure that messages are routed appropriately and shared data is available to users of both systems.

Service Pack 2 introduces a new configuration wizard to ease the configuration and creation of these hybrid deployments. The wizard enables the relevant hybrid features, such as mailbox migration between cloud and on-premises installation, and performs the necessary configuration to connect the local Exchange to the cloud one.

Such features are all part of a broader Microsoft strategy to get customers migrated into the cloud. As ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reported last month, Microsoft is building the tools to help customers both build private clouds, with improved virtualization and management facilities, and migrate from private installations to public clouds.

These developments are in turn making sense of Steve Ballmer's oft-repeated claim that Microsoft is "all-in" on the cloud. Cloud offerings such as Office 365 and Azure are not some mere afterthought: they're central parts of Microsoft's platform offering, and it wants to make it as easy as possible for customers to migrate to them.

I am interested in moving us into the cloud, but find Google's offering more attractive. How does this fit in with Google Apps?

Working with the occasional client that uses an internal Exchange setup (while we provide Google Apps for email).. it tends to be retarded, although that's normally a byproduct of IT providers that don't know what they are doing, and try to shoehorn things.

I am interested in moving us into the cloud, but find Google's offering more attractive. How does this fit in with Google Apps?

Exchange is a MUCH more powerful email/calendar system than Google Apps. They're different products targeting different markets.

Frankly, every business over 20 people or so needs Exchange. It just does so much. And it integrates better with smartphones, too.

Basically, if you are running an Active Directory network, you probably want Exchange.

For all its worth, it's a hard sale for small businesses when you factor in licensing costs plus consulting costs if they don't have IT staff. Office 360 and Google apps with the outlook connector might have recurring costs but they eliminate the high up front cost of exchange server + licensing + outlook and don't require on site IT staff or paying for outside resources to come in and manage the servers for them.

I am interested in moving us into the cloud, but find Google's offering more attractive. How does this fit in with Google Apps?

Exchange is a MUCH more powerful email/calendar system than Google Apps. They're different products targeting different markets.

Frankly, every business over 20 people or so needs Exchange. It just does so much. And it integrates better with smartphones, too.

Basically, if you are running an Active Directory network, you probably want Exchange.

For all its worth, it's a hard sale for small businesses when you factor in licensing costs plus consulting costs if they don't have IT staff. Office 360 and Google apps with the outlook connector might have recurring costs but they eliminate the high up front cost of exchange server + licensing + outlook and don't require on site IT staff or paying for outside resources to come in and manage the servers for them.

Exchange hosting can be had for roughly 6 bucks a month per employee. Thats what you sell small business. Google calendar is horrible.

I am interested in moving us into the cloud, but find Google's offering more attractive. How does this fit in with Google Apps?

Exchange is a MUCH more powerful email/calendar system than Google Apps. They're different products targeting different markets.

Frankly, every business over 20 people or so needs Exchange. It just does so much. And it integrates better with smartphones, too.

Basically, if you are running an Active Directory network, you probably want Exchange.

...if that's sufficient advice, the wrong person is making this decision.

But for those organizations who do use Exchange, for whom migrating to the cloud is an option, this is a welcome feature... if only because migrating away from in-house Exchange to just about anything else is, one way or another, a costly pain in the ass.

It's a shame you have to go through the trouble of upgrading to Exchange 2010 in the first place, if that's the route you'd wanna go.

I am interested in moving us into the cloud, but find Google's offering more attractive. How does this fit in with Google Apps?

Exchange is a MUCH more powerful email/calendar system than Google Apps. They're different products targeting different markets.

Frankly, every business over 20 people or so needs Exchange. It just does so much. And it integrates better with smartphones, too.

Basically, if you are running an Active Directory network, you probably want Exchange.

...if that's sufficient advice, the wrong person is making this decision.

But for those organizations who do use Exchange, for whom migrating to the cloud is an option, this is a welcome feature... if only because migrating away from in-house Exchange to just about anything else is, one way or another, a costly pain in the ass.

It's a shame you have to go through the trouble of upgrading to Exchange 2010 in the first place, if that's the route you'd wanna go.

You can use a single 2010 server as a gateway from a 2007 or 2003 deployment to an Office 365 deployment.

I am interested in moving us into the cloud, but find Google's offering more attractive. How does this fit in with Google Apps?

Exchange is a MUCH more powerful email/calendar system than Google Apps. They're different products targeting different markets.

Frankly, every business over 20 people or so needs Exchange. It just does so much. And it integrates better with smartphones, too.

Basically, if you are running an Active Directory network, you probably want Exchange.

For all its worth, it's a hard sale for small businesses when you factor in licensing costs plus consulting costs if they don't have IT staff. Office 360 and Google apps with the outlook connector might have recurring costs but they eliminate the high up front cost of exchange server + licensing + outlook and don't require on site IT staff or paying for outside resources to come in and manage the servers for them.

Exchange hosting can be had for roughly 6 bucks a month per employee. Thats what you sell small business.

We run Exchange 2010 for a medium technical school, and all students get exchange mailboxes. We've been kicking around the idea of booting them to GMail just so they can get more storage than we would be able to provide or Live@Edu - but MS keeps changing around the service... maybe this is finally the answer to get students off our small exchange environment and into a place that they can save more than a semester of email.

Alright, anybody had the balls to already deploy it in production? :-)

Back in February, I kicked three Exchange Servers to the curb in favor of Google Apps for a multi-divisional enterprise. We have a one year anniversary coming and could not be happier. I have to disagree with the Google Apps nay-sayers, but I also spent the year previous in a feasibility study and running a pilot program. Google Apps was my recommendation, my "sweat" equity for roll-out, and my neck if it failed.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Google Apps is that Outlook needs to go away or you are stuck with IMAP / POP for connectivity. The reality is Google bought a license from Microsoft for the MAPI protocol and created "Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook". I have never witnessed a third party tool that emulates the Exchange / Outlook MAPI relationship so closely. If I had not known better, I would have thought it was Exchange. The catch? This tool is only offered to paying customers - $50 per user, per year. That is just one of the reasons why I ran a pilot program.

Then again, a project requirement was employees should be able to continue to use Outlook if they want and not suffer a penalty because of the choice. 70% of our employees still use Outlook, but more are converting to the web interface as we train them. I scrapped Outlook personally during the pilot, but I have also spent countless hours learning to harness the power of the native (web) interface.

Where "molo" says businesses over 20 users need Exchange, I say no company under 1000 employees needs it anymore. In my opinion, Google Apps e-mail, calendar and smartphone capabilities are far superior to Microsoft's. Regardless, I won't forget the day I powered off the last Exchange Server and put over 15 years of daily administration to pasture. Office 365 was not around during my study, but I am confident with the choice we made. Since February, I have added archiving and SOX compliance which makes for happy Execs

[...]For all its worth, it's a hard sale for small businesses when you factor in licensing costs plus consulting costs if they don't have IT staff. Office 360 and Google apps with the outlook connector might have recurring costs but they eliminate the high up front cost of exchange server + licensing + outlook and don't require on site IT staff or paying for outside resources to come in and manage the servers for them.

well, microsoft and the other large business software companies tend to have their own financing to turn that big upfront investment into monthly payments just like the SaaS companies offer. If cash is the important consideration, using that kind of resource should help people compare apples with apples.

Alright, anybody had the balls to already deploy it in production? :-)

Back in February, I kicked three Exchange Servers to the curb in favor of Google Apps for a multi-divisional enterprise. We have a one year anniversary coming and could not be happier. I have to disagree with the Google Apps nay-sayers, but I also spent the year previous in a feasibility study and running a pilot program. Google Apps was my recommendation, my "sweat" equity for roll-out, and my neck if it failed.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Google Apps is that Outlook needs to go away or you are stuck with IMAP / POP for connectivity. The reality is Google bought a license from Microsoft for the MAPI protocol and created "Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook". I have never witnessed a third party tool that emulates the Exchange / Outlook MAPI relationship so closely. If I had not known better, I would have thought it was Exchange. The catch? This tool is only offered to paying customers - $50 per user, per year. That is just one of the reasons why I ran a pilot program.

Then again, a project requirement was employees should be able to continue to use Outlook if they want and not suffer a penalty because of the choice. 70% of our employees still use Outlook, but more are converting to the web interface as we train them. I scrapped Outlook personally during the pilot, but I have also spent countless hours learning to harness the power of the native (web) interface.

Where "molo" says businesses over 20 users need Exchange, I say no company under 1000 employees needs it anymore. In my opinion, Google Apps e-mail, calendar and smartphone capabilities are far superior to Microsoft's. Regardless, I won't forget the day I powered off the last Exchange Server and put over 15 years of daily administration to pasture. Office 365 was not around during my study, but I am confident with the choice we made. Since February, I have added archiving and SOX compliance which makes for happy Execs

Now - what to do with my remaining servers...

So what do you do about public folders, shared mailboxes, loading multiple profiles, or any other semi-advanced feature? Does your organization not use these at all, or were you able to overcome them somehow?

Exchange is a MUCH more powerful email/calendar system than Google Apps. They're different products targeting different markets.

Frankly, every business over 20 people or so needs Exchange. It just does so much. And it integrates better with smartphones, too.

Basically, if you are running an Active Directory network, you probably want Exchange.

Lol. I hate this crap. There are tons of other options which are much better in many cases. Zimbra, Zarafa, Openxchange, Scalix, Lotus Domino...etc etc.

++

We are all windows with active directory and also love Google Apps, we sync our directory with Apps and Postini, along with SSO with password sync.IMO the calendaring in Google is just awesome... I have not had a single user say they wanted their outlook back...

Dont get me wrong I like exchange, I think its great... but if your still using/need a software client...

The only bad deployments of any of the above solution I have seen are ones where the people deploying them have no idea what they are doing...

So what do you do about public folders, shared mailboxes, loading multiple profiles, or any other semi-advanced feature? Does your organization not use these at all, or were you able to overcome them somehow?

Yes you can do public folders with google apps, and shared mailboxes - delegated accounts...

We have our entire intranet in google apps - utilizing Docs/sites/forms. We also do all our workflows through Apps, utilizing Apps Scripting/forms/docs/spreadsheets/calendars, to tie work flows together. There are so many things you can do with Apps...

So what do you do about public folders, shared mailboxes, loading multiple profiles, or any other semi-advanced feature? Does your organization not use these at all, or were you able to overcome them somehow?

Yes you can do public folders with google apps, and shared mailboxes - delegated accounts...

We have our entire intranet in google apps - utilizing Docs/sites/forms. We also do all our workflows through Apps, utilizing Apps Scripting/forms/docs/spreadsheets/calendars, to tie work flows together. There are so many things you can do with Apps...

I am interested in moving us into the cloud, but find Google's offering more attractive. How does this fit in with Google Apps?

Exchange is a MUCH more powerful email/calendar system than Google Apps. They're different products targeting different markets.

Frankly, every business over 20 people or so needs Exchange. It just does so much. And it integrates better with smartphones, too.

Basically, if you are running an Active Directory network, you probably want Exchange.

...if that's sufficient advice, the wrong person is making this decision.

But for those organizations who do use Exchange, for whom migrating to the cloud is an option, this is a welcome feature... if only because migrating away from in-house Exchange to just about anything else is, one way or another, a costly pain in the ass.

It's a shame you have to go through the trouble of upgrading to Exchange 2010 in the first place, if that's the route you'd wanna go.

So what do you do about public folders, shared mailboxes, loading multiple profiles, or any other semi-advanced feature? Does your organization not use these at all, or were you able to overcome them somehow?

Public folders are the only feature I've had one or two clients looking for. You'd be surprised how few people use it--honestly it has very limited uses in very specific use-cases vs the alternatives like groups and delegate access.

What do you mean "loading multiple profiles"? Why do you need multiple profiles? Never out of the thousands of users I've dealt with have I ever heard someone ask for this.

If you had some specific questions regarding "semi-advanced features" I could help find you their parallel in the Google Apps world. Can't say they will all exist, but I can say that it is a much more capable system than many seem to believe--It almost always comes back to being misunderstood.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Google Apps is that Outlook needs to go away or you are stuck with IMAP / POP for connectivity. The reality is Google bought a license from Microsoft for the MAPI protocol and created "Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook". I have never witnessed a third party tool that emulates the Exchange / Outlook MAPI relationship so closely.

Google is licensing Microsoft technology to make their advanced technology work so well. And the protocol you're thinking of that you forgot was RPC over HTTPS, that's the protocol that emulates MAPI. While Google Apps Sync works fine, nothing beats emulating the actual protocol like Microsoft does.

Quote:

Then again, a project requirement was employees should be able to continue to use Outlook if they want and not suffer a penalty because of the choice. 70% of our employees still use Outlook, but more are converting to the web interface as we train them. I scrapped Outlook personally during the pilot, but I have also spent countless hours learning to harness the power of the native (web) interface.

I think the fact that 70% of your employees continue to use Outlook, given the choice, shows that Microsoft is doing something right with Outlook if your users aren't switching in droves. Google Mail isn't bad either, I use it for my personal account and use Outlook at work. The meeting and calendar features in Outlook/Exchange don't really compare to the basics in Google Apps.

Quote:

Where "molo" says businesses over 20 users need Exchange, I say no company under 1000 employees needs it anymore. In my opinion, Google Apps e-mail, calendar and smartphone capabilities are far superior to Microsoft's.

You realize the AirSync, which is the protocol Google is using for smartphone synchronization, is also licensed from Microsoft as well? In fact, that protocol works so damned well, that everyone but Blackberry uses it anymore and we all know how well they're doing recently.

Quote:

Regardless, I won't forget the day I powered off the last Exchange Server and put over 15 years of daily administration to pasture.

All you really did was transfer the work to Google. They still have support engineers maintaining their servers and fixing problems as they occur. You would have gotten the same benefit from moving to Office365.

Quote:

Lol. I hate this crap. There are tons of other options which are much better in many cases. Zimbra, Zarafa, Openxchange, Scalix, Lotus Domino...etc etc.

None of those are better options than Google Apps or Exchange. Lotus Domino is the WORST of the e-mail products still being used today. Those others you mentioned aren't even blips on the e-mail server market radar.

So what do you do about public folders, shared mailboxes, loading multiple profiles, or any other semi-advanced feature? Does your organization not use these at all, or were you able to overcome them somehow?

Public folders are the only feature I've had one or two clients looking for. You'd be surprised how few people use it--honestly it has very limited uses in very specific use-cases vs the alternatives like groups and delegate access.

What do you mean "loading multiple profiles"? Why do you need multiple profiles? Never out of the thousands of users I've dealt with have I ever heard someone ask for this.

If you had some specific questions regarding "semi-advanced features" I could help find you their parallel in the Google Apps world. Can't say they will all exist, but I can say that it is a much more capable system than many seem to believe--It almost always comes back to being misunderstood.

I believe we were having discussions on the other Google Apps article from the other day :).

I've dealt with several clients that need to be able to load several user profiles in Outlook, although this still *may* be able to be done with Google Apps on the backend. There's also other little things such as scheduling an email to be sent at a later date and mail merge.

On the surface Google Apps does the majority of the functionality that users need, but it's the details that are preventing other organizations from considering them (aside from the whole data in the cloud thing).

I think the fact that 70% of your employees continue to use Outlook, given the choice, shows that Microsoft is doing something right with Outlook if your users aren't switching in droves. Google Mail isn't bad either, I use it for my personal account and use Outlook at work. The meeting and calendar features in Outlook/Exchange don't really compare to the basics in Google Apps.

From experience, this has more to do with people being "busy enough" and not liking disruptions--which is fair enough and totally human. The path of least resistance and all that. My counter-argument is the fact that the vast majority of our clients don't want to go back to Outlook once they're forced to use Gmail for long enough to learn it

magic_p wrote:

You realize the AirSync, which is the protocol Google is using for smartphone synchronization, is also licensed from Microsoft as well? In fact, that protocol works so damned well, that everyone but Blackberry uses it anymore and we all know how well they're doing recently.

I don't know if you know something I don't, or if there's some confusion here, but I think you're talking about ActiveSync. Google Apps does support ActiveSync, and Android devices support Active Sync, but there are a couple of points to be made here:

1.) Google Apps supports ActiveSync because essentially all smartphones already have this capability, and it allows a quick and easy setup for businesses on Symbian/iOS etc. etc.

2.) Android supports ActiveSync because not everybody with an Android device is using Google Apps for Business and need to connect to their Exchange or other legacy server.

3.) If you have Google Apps and an Android device and you are using ActiveSync, you have set the phone up wrong. There is a native Gmail application for Android that integrates with Google Apps and from my understanding none of this is built on Microsoft technology.

I believe we were having discussions on the other Google Apps article from the other day .

I've dealt with several clients that need to be able to load several user profiles in Outlook, although this still *may* be able to be done with Google Apps on the backend. There's also other little things such as scheduling an email to be sent at a later date and mail merge.

On the surface Google Apps does the majority of the functionality that users need, but it's the details that are preventing other organizations from considering them (aside from the whole data in the cloud thing).

We were Sorry if I went AWOL I must have lost my place or been too busy!

You can use as many profiles as you like with Google Apps as long as you are using Outlook on the front-end. I am more confused about why this would ever need to be done than anything else--In reality, using Gmail you can sign in to multiple Google accounts at once and through roughly 3 clicks you can swap between accounts and even have them all open in tabs concurrently. For example, I contract with two other companies, and I am able to have all 3 of my Gmail accounts open in Chrome at the same time using tabs.

Scheduled mail and mail merging are typically relationship management issues and not email issues. The vast majority of users will never require these functions, though they are certainly important. The CRM and project management system I use integrates with Google Apps and does support the ability to run a mail-merge through Google Docs scripts as well as schedule emails.

Surprisingly a lot of businesses are still scared of that "data in the cloud" idea... I don't quite understand why. You're 100% free to use 3rd party archiving systems, or run your own backups to a local machine or other mail account. From a security standpoint, it is understandable for a very select few organizations, but as long as you keep admin passwords complex enough and change on occasion, as well as pay attention to the built-in password security feedback it's difficult to argue that what Google offers is not secure enough for the majority of businesses.

In my experience it's not security or fear of the cloud that is holding people back from either Google Apps or Office365, it's the number of third-party products that integrate with Outlook/Exchange.

For my company it's several reasons:

1. Security- There's no way our data is going to the cloud, the risk just isn't worth it in our opinion.2. WAN Connectivity- It may not happen often, but if the WAN goes down we are still able to send emails and IM's internally.3. Lotus- Where do I even start...

Alright, anybody had the balls to already deploy it in production? :-)

So what do you do about public folders, shared mailboxes, loading multiple profiles, or any other semi-advanced feature? Does your organization not use these at all, or were you able to overcome them somehow?

The short answer is yes, we found solutions. But they varied depending on the circumstance. By its nature, Google Apps is one big collaboration package. What was public folders in Exchange has mutated into something much better with Google Groups, Sites, Docs and Calendar.

Many of our departments have a shared mailbox or a multiple profile scenario like you mentioned. One department had multiple shared accounts and wanted to scrap Outlook at launch. Another department was partial to Outlook and wanted their shared account to suit. I was able to accommodate both requests.

However, as much as it was required that Outlook continued to be available for those who wanted it, this project was truly about leveraging the power of the full Google Apps platform. Employees are venturing away from Windows and want access to corporate resources from Macs, iPhones / iPads, Androids, and what not (myself included). I've told users that Outlook would never go away if I have a say. But it's not like we're launching new services with Outlook in mind - public folders being a good example.

In my experience it's not security or fear of the cloud that is holding people back from either Google Apps or Office365, it's the number of third-party products that integrate with Outlook/Exchange.

For my company it's several reasons:

1. Security- There's no way our data is going to the cloud, the risk just isn't worth it in our opinion.2. WAN Connectivity- It may not happen often, but if the WAN goes down we are still able to send emails and IM's internally.3. Lotus- Where do I even start...

You really only need to say Lotus hehehe

Only migrated 2 businesses from Lotus to Google Apps--what a nightmare.

I won't argue security, because there are way too many things to cover and to some people the fact that it is not on-site is simply the problem.

As for WAN connectivity, I can see that. There are offline modes for the Google products, but that doesn't mean you'll still be able to IM internally etc.. But, a dual-WAN configuration is still much more affordable than that new server and other software licenses by a long shot.

In my experience it's not security or fear of the cloud that is holding people back from either Google Apps or Office365, it's the number of third-party products that integrate with Outlook/Exchange.

For my company it's several reasons:

1. Security- There's no way our data is going to the cloud, the risk just isn't worth it in our opinion.2. WAN Connectivity- It may not happen often, but if the WAN goes down we are still able to send emails and IM's internally.3. Lotus- Where do I even start...

You really only need to say Lotus hehehe

Only migrated 2 businesses from Lotus to Google Apps--what a nightmare.

I won't argue security, because there are way too many things to cover and to some people the fact that it is not on-site is simply the problem.

As for WAN connectivity, I can see that. There are offline modes for the Google products, but that doesn't mean you'll still be able to IM internally etc.. But, a dual-WAN configuration is still much more affordable than that new server and other software licenses by a long shot.